PR 1 (Unit 1)

• Importance of research in daily life:

  • Research provides a scientific basis for any practice or methodology in any field or discipline
  • Undertaken for continuous development and further productivity in any field
  • Helps develop tools for assessing effectiveness of any practice and operations
  • Provides solutions to problems concerning almost all issues encountered in different areas of work
  • Impacts decision-making
  • Develops and evaluates alternative approaches to the educational aspects of any discipline
  • Aims to advance the personal and professional qualifications of a practitioner
• Characteristics of research:

  • Empirical: based on observations and experiments of theories, supported by evidence and details for every variable
  • Systematic: follows orderly and sequential procedures based on valid principles
  • Controlled: keeps all variables constant except those being tested/experimented on
  • Employs hypothesis: searches for facts, answers to questions, and solutions to problems
  • Analytical: shows analytical procedures in gathering data, whether historical, descriptive, or case study
  • Objective: unbiased and logical, findings based on real-life situations
• • Original work: requires its own examination and produces the data needed
• Processes of research:

  • Define research problem
  • Review related literature
  • Formulate hypothesis
  • Research design
  • Collect data
  • Analyze data
  • Interpret and report results
• Ethical guidelines in research:

  • Ethics promote pursuit of knowledge, truth, and credibility
  • Help individuals be accountable for their actions
  • Ensure researchers are held accountable to the public
  • Need public awareness and evaluation before conducting the study
• Types of research across fields:

  • Basic, pure, fundamental research: main motivation is to expand human knowledge
  • Applied research: designed to solve practical problems of the modern world
  • Scientific research: explains naturally occurring phenomena in the natural world
  • Research in the humanities: defines the purpose of human existence
  • Artistic research: provides alternative approaches to established concepts
• Action Research:

  • Studies an ongoing practice of a school, organization, community, or institution to bring about improvement
  • Follows a cyclical process: identification of a problem, action plan making, action plan implementation, data gathering, data analysis, and evaluation of effectiveness
• Causal Design:

  • Explores how a specific change impacts a certain situation
  • Employs hypotheses to establish cause-effect relationships between variables
• Experimental Design:

  • Researcher controls factors and variables related to a phenomena to determine possible effects
• Exploratory Design:

  • Focuses on topics with little or no previous studies
  • Aims to gain information and insight for future research
• Cohort Design:

  • Studies a group of people with common characteristics over time
  • Seeks to identify how these groups are affected by certain factors or changes
• Cross-sectional Design:

  • Looks into a large group of people with varied characteristics at a specific time to determine how they are affected by a variable or change
• Longitudinal Design:

  • Follows a group of people over a long period to track changes and identify causal factors
• Correlational Design:

  • Shows relationships between variables without determining causation
  • Can be positive or negative correlation based on variable changes or data collection technique
• Descriptive Design:

  • Answers who, what, when, where, and how questions related to a research problem
  • Aims to explain present situations and validate previous research findings
• Mixed-methods Design:

  • Combines qualitative and quantitative research methods to fully understand and validate research problems
• Qualitative Research:

  • Aims to understand underlying reasons and motivations
  • Uses unstructured or semi-structured data collection techniques
  • Findings are exploratory and not conclusive
• Quantitative Research:

  • Aims to quantify data and generalize results
  • Uses structured data collection techniques
  • Findings are usually conclusive and descriptive